Evergreen 2.5 Release Notes

A new Activate PO Without Loading Items option in the PO allows staff to activate the PO without loading copies into the catalog.

In the ACQ user interface, it is now more clear to users when a lineitem has been fully cancelled or if it has been cancelled temporarily (e.g. back- ordered).

When a lineitem is cancelled, but "keep_debits" is true on the cancel reason, the lineitem is in effect delayed instead of truly cancelled. This is now more obvious in the interface with different row styling for cancelled vs delayed lineitems. We also always show the lineitem cancel reason (label) next to the non-title attributes in the lineitem list display.

The following Apache configuration changes are required to support the locale-aware IDL2js module.

Source code for tools to generate the staff clients updates tools were added to Open-ILS/xul/staff_client/external/libmar. These tools replace the downloadable tools from Mozilla.org that were previously used to generate the staff client updates files.

They come with their own configuration script and are condfigured automatically as a subpackage when you configure Evergreen for installation. They are also built and ready for use when you make Evergreen during the installation or upgrade process.

The make_updates.sh script that is run when you tell Evergreen to make the staff client updates has been modified to use the new tools.

These tools introduce a dependency on libbz2. This is often only available when installing the libbz2-dev or libbz2-devel packages. Thus this branch introduces a new depency on the development packages for libbz2 in Evergreen.

Nothing in the user facing behavior of building updates changes with these tools. They are drop-in replacements for the previous tools and other than the new dependency on libbz2, you don’t even need to know that they are there.

These tools were added to Evergreen to be an aid in portability to operating systems other than Linux. They also remove a dependency on a third-party tool, that is typically downloaded as a binary.

Action Trigger Event Definitions have a new field, "Event Repeatability Delay". This feature allows events to be repeated after the designated delay interval. An example of this is sending a notification email when a patron’s library card expires. If the library extends the expiration date on that card, we then need a way to send another notification email when that same card expires again. Before, the Action Trigger processor only created a new event if the event definition for that target had never been run before. But now it allows repeating of the event after the delay interval, if present.

Via org settings, support auto-generation of call numbers and barcodes for items imported via Vandelay’s Item Import interface. Support settings for applying a local prefix string to auto-generated call numbers and barcodes. For both, the prefix defaults to "VAN".

Similarly, support default copy location and circ modifiers.

A new global flag option has been added to allow the circulating library of a desk renewal (aka a renewal using the staff client) to reuse the original circulation library for circ rule behaviors rather than using the workstation. This new setting is similar to existing options to use the originating circulation library in OPAC renewals.

Before floating groups copies could float or not. If they floated then they floated everywhere, with no restrictions.

After floating groups where a copy will float is defined by what group it has been assigned to.

Each floating group comes with a name and a manual flag, plus zero or more group members. The name is used solely for selection and display purposes.

The manual flag dictates whether or not the "Manual Floating Active" checkin modifier needs to be active for a copy to float. This allows for greater control over when items float. It also prevents automated checkins via SIP2 from triggering floats.

Each member of a floating group references an org unit and has a stop depth, an optional max depth, and an exclude flag.

This is the long-overdue version of the existing PATRON_EXCEEDS_LOST_COUNT standing penalty. When a patron exceeds the configured threshold for open long-overdue (i.e. non-zero balance) circulations, the penalty is applied. When the number once again goes below the threshold, the penalty is removed.

The penalty name is PATRON_EXCEEDS_LONGOVERDUE_COUNT / "Patron Exceeds Max Long-Overdue Threshold"

This is a two-part feature, which covers marking circulations as long overdue via automated processing and check-in of long overdue circulations.

A new Action/Trigger reactor (MarkItemLongOverdue) and sample event definition (6 Month Overdue Mark Long-Overdue) are included for marking circulations and their associated copies as long overdue. New org unit settings determine whether the item price and/or a processing fee is applied.

A secondary Action/Trigger hook (longoverdue.auto) and sample event definition (6 Month Long Overdue Notice) are added so that (email, etc.) notifications can be sent when a circulation is marked long overdue via this new automated process.

Also included is a new Action/Trigger validator PatronNotInCollections, which can be used to prevent long overdue processing (or any circ-based event definition) for patrons that are in collections processing at (or above) the circulating library.

Check-in of long overdue items may result in any of the following actions, depending on configuration.

The process is practically identical to Lost processing. However, one difference between Lost and Long Overdue check-in is that the window of time during which a long overdue item may be returned may be based on the due date (like Lost) or the last billing activity date (last payment, last billing). This is controlled with the "Long-Overdue Check-In Interval Uses Last Activity Date" org unit setting.

This feature has two main parts, both of which are to improve the staff’s ability to assist patrons in regards to lost items.

The value for behind-the-desk pickup is now stored directly on each hold request. This allows the system to better track the true location of captured hold items in cases where the patron setting has changed since hold capture.

For these features to be accessible, the "Behind Desk Pickup Supported" (circ.holds.behind_desk_pickup_supported) org unit setting must be set to true.

In addition to the counts of ready for pickup and available holds, the staff client now also displays the number of behind the desk holds ready for pickup at the staff’s working location. If no items are held behind the desk, this information does not display, in particular, because this information is useless if behind the desk holds are not supported at the staff’s working location.

The system also allows patrons to set their own behind-the-desk pickup preferences in the TPAC settings interface. To activate this feature, admins need to set the Opac Visible flag to "true" for the "Hold is behind Circ Desk" (circ.holds_behind_desk) user setting and "Behind Desk Pickup Supported" must be set to true for the patron’s home library.

Add ability to print a receipt for just a single selected item from the patron interface for Items Out or Lost, Claims Returned, Long Overdue, Has Unpaid Billings. This can be used via right-click or using the Actions for Selected Items button.

In checkout, when pasting a barcode into the lookup field, one may accidentally include spaces or tabs in the beginning or end of the barcode string. Trim those away to avoid potential mis-scans.

Items which are LOST, LONGOVERDUE, or CLAIMSRETURNED may now be displayed in the top/main list of circulations instead of the bottom list in the staff client patron Items Out interface. Similarly, such items can be removed from the display once the items are checked in even if the transaction is still open (fines are owed, etc.).

Apart from organization, this has two additional effects:

The Evergreen installer now includes a shortcut that launches the staff client directly into standalone (offline) mode.

For use during Patron Registration, we can now supply default values for User Settings, under Admin → Server Administration → User Setting Types.

Traditionally, Evergreen has supported Added Content lookups by ISBN only, or (more recently) by one of ISBN or UPC.

This enhancement adds support for Added Content lookups by record ID, while still supporting the previous URL format for lookups by ISBN.

The JSPAC and TPAC skins, as well as the web-based Self Checkout interface templates are updated to use jacket images / cover art by record ID by default.

By using record identifiers, the Added Content handler has the opportnity to examine additional identifiers in the bib record. Currently, these include:

Currently, only the OpenILS::WWW::AddedContent::Syndetic provider makes use of the new identifiers.

Just as with ISBN lookups, there is support for local overrides in the form of a file created on disk which short-circuits any external Added Content lookup.

The example Apache configs have been updated to support serving blank.png when added content jacket URLs return a 404. This prevents "broken image" placeholders in browsers, without requiring a Javascript onerror handler on each img tag.

The changes are as follows:

In the eg.conf VirtualHost declaration for SSL, add:

In the eg_vhost.conf file, add:

This feature provides a patron-oriented OPAC interface for browsing bibliographic records.

Users choose to browse by Author, Title, Subject, or Series. They then enter a browse term, and the nearest match from a left-anchored search on the headings extracted for browse purposes will be displayed in a typical backwards/forwards paging display. Headings link to search results pages showing the related records. If the browse heading is linked to any authority records, and if any other authority records point to those with "See also" or other non-main entry headings, those alternative headings are displayed a linked to a search results page showing related bib records related to the alternate heading.

The counts of holdings displayed next to headings from bibliographic records are subject to the same visiibility tests as search. This means that the org unit (and copy location group) dropdown on the browse interface affects counds, and it further means that whether or not you’re looking at the browse interface through the staff client makes a difference.

There are two off-by-default features that site administrators may wish to enable.

Also, by default, authors are indexed for browse in such a way that relator roles like "creator" are dropped off the end of their headings. This was an aesthetic choice. If a site wanted to display those kinds of terms, they would update the config.metabib_field table in the database, setting browse_xpath to NULL where field_class = 'author' and browse_field is true.

A patron may find one or more available copies of an item that they want to retrieve, but may not be familiar with the location, hours of operation, or contact information for each branch of their local library system. To enable the patron to quickly access information about a given library branch, the TPAC and KPAC can link the name of the branch in the copy details display to a URL associated with that branch.

To set the URL for a given branch, use the Local Administration → Library Settings Editor and edit the Library Information URL setting for that branch. Any branches that do not have a library information URL setting display as normal text.

Patrons may now fill out a web-based form from within the TPAC to create pending user accounts. The goal is to make the registration process more efficient by allowing the patron to provide much of the registration details in advance of registering with staff.

Pending user accounts have no privileges.

The form supports hiding fields, requiring fields, applying format validation, and displaying example text for selected fields by inspecting the relevant patron registration org unit settings.

The "Request Library Card" link appears as the second default "bottom link" in the TPAC.

If a user is logged in when clicking the register link, the logged in user will be tracked as the requesting user for the pending account. Additionally, the home org unit and some address fields will be pre-populated for convenience (with the assumption that these will likely be the same for the pending user — they can of course be changed). When a requesting user is present on the pending user, a link to the requesting user will be displayed within the patron registration form in the staff client.

Pending patron accounts which sit unattended in the database for too long are purged via a regularly running (CRON) script.

In the Serial Control View, you can now flag a note as an "alert" to make it more visible on the receiving interface. This flag is available on subscription, distribution and item notes. The new "Alerts" button on the Items tab displays the number of alert notes that are available for the selected items, and clicking this button opens a window which displays all applicable alert notes, sorted by type. Notes can also be edited or deleted from this window.

PhoneList.pm is a mod_perl module for Apache that works with Evergreen to generate callings lists for patron holds. It outputs a csv file that can be fed into an auto-dialer script to call patrons with little or no staff intervention. It is accessed and configured via a special URL and passing any parameters as a “Query String” on the URL. The parameters are listed in the table below.

The URL is

https://your.evergreen-server.tld/phonelist

A couple of examples follow:

`https://your.evergreen-server.tld/phonelist?user=circuser&passwd=password&skipemail

The above example would sign in as user circuser with password of “password” and get a list of patrons with holds to call who do not have email notification turned on. It would run at whatever branch is normally associated with circuser, which would likely be MVC or central site. (Note: There is no actual circuser account, it is used here for illustration purposes only.)

https://your.evergreen-server.tld/phonelist?skipemail

The above example would do more or less the same, but you would be prompted by your browser for the user name and password.

If your browser or download script support it, you may also use conventional HTTP authentication parameters.

https://user:password@your.evergreen-server.tld/phonelist?overdue&ws_ou=2

The above logs in as “user” with “password” and runs overdues for location ID 2.

The following sections provide more information on getting what you want in your output.

If you are not familiar with HTTP/URL query strings, the format is quite simple.

You add parameters to the end of the URL, the first parameter is separated from the URL page with a question mark (`?'') character. If the parameter is to be given an extra value, then that value follows the parameter name after an equals sign (“=''). Subsequent parameters are separated from the previous parameter by an ampersand (`&”).

Here is an example with 1 parameter that has no value:

https://your.evergreen-server.tld/phonelist?skipemail

An example of 1 argument with a value:

https://your.evergreen-server.tld/phonelist?overdue=21

An example of 2 arguments, 1 with a value and 1 without:

https://your.evergreen-server.tld/phonelist?overdue=21&skipemail

Any misspelled or parameters not listed in the table above will be ignored by the program.

On a successful run, the program will return a CSV file named phone.csv. Depending on your browser or settings you will alternately be prompted to open or save the file. Your browser may also automatically save the file in your Downloads or other designated folder. You should be able to open this CSV file in Excel, LibreOffice Base, any other spread sheet program, or a text editor.

If you have made a mistake and have mistyped your user name or password, or if you supply a ws_ou parameter with an ID where your user name does not have permission to look up holds or overdue information, then you will get an error returned in your browser.

Should your browser appear to do absolutely nothing at all. This is normal. When there is no information for you to download, the server will return a 200 NO CONTENT message to your browser. Most browsers respond to this message by doing nothing at all. It is possible for there to be no information for you to retrieve if you added the skipemail option and all of your notices for that day were sent via email, or if you ran this in the morning and then again in the afternoon and there was no new information to gather.

The program does indicate that it has already looked at a particular hold or overdue and will skip it on later runs. This prevents duplicates to the same patron in the same run. It will, however, create a “duplicate” for the same patron if a different copy is put on hold for that patron in between two runs.

The specific content of the CSV file will vary if you are looking at holds or overdues. The specific contents are described in the appropriate sections below.

The phonelist program will return a list of patrons with copies on hold by default, so long as you do not use the overdue parameter. You may optionally get a number of items that patron currently has on hold by adding the addcount parameter.

As always, you can add the skipemail parameter to skip patrons with email notifications of their overdues, [#0.5.Skipping patrons with email notification of holds|outline as described below].

If you add the overdue parameter, you can get a list of patrons with overdue copies instead of a list of patrons with copies on the hold shelf. By default, this will give you a list of patrons with copies that are 14 days overdue. If you’d like to specify a different number of days you can add the number after the parameter with an equals sign:

https://your.evergreen-server.tld/phonelist?overdue=21&ws_ou=2

The above will retrieve a list of patrons who have items that are 21 days overdue at the location with ID of 2.

The number of days is an exact lookup. This means that the program will look only at patrons who have items exactly 14 days or exactly the number of days specified overdue. It does not pull up any that are less than or greater than the number of days specified.

As always, you can add the skipemail parameter to skip patrons with email notifications of their overdues, [#0.5.Skipping patrons with email notification of holds|outline as described below].

Skipping patrons who have email notification for their holds or overdues is very simple. You just need to add the skipemail parameter on the URL query string. Doing so will produce the list without the patrons who have email notification for overdues, or for all of their holds. Please note that if a patron has multiple holds available, and even one of these holds requests a phone-only notification, then that patron will still show on the list. For this option to exclude a patron from the holds list, the patron must request email notification on all of their current holds. In practice, we find that this is usually the case.

Generally, you will not need to use the ws_ou parameter when using the phonelist program. The phonelist will look up the branch where your login account works and use that location when generating the list. However, if you are part of a multi-branch systems in a consortium, then the ws_ou parameter will be of interest to you. You can use it to specify which branch, or the whole system, you wish to search when running the program.

If you’d like to automate the download of these files, you should be able to do so using any HTTP programming toolkit. Your client must accept cookies and follow any redirects in order to function.

Similar to purging circulations one may wish to purge old (filled or canceled) hold information. This feature adds a database function and settings for doing so.

Purged holds are moved to the action.aged_hold_request table with patron identifying information scrubbed, much like circulations are moved to action.aged_circulation.

The settings allow for a default retention age as well as filled, canceled, and canceled by cancel cause ages. The most specific one wins unless a patron is retaining their hold history. In the latter case the patron’s holds are retained either way.

Note that the function still needs to be called, which could be set up as a cron job or done more manually, say after statistics collection. A new script, purge_holds.srfsh, is added that can be used to purge holds from cron.

P.V. SUPA GoodStuff Integration

This adds a "Server Add-ons" menu entry under Admin → Workstation Administration in the staff client. Choosing this allows you to edit or set a list of identifiers that correspond to JSAN-style modules found in /server/addons/, and is meant mainly for activating 3rd party modules within the staff client on a per-workstation basis. You need the ADMIN_SERVER_ADDON_FOR_WORKSTATION permission to use it.

Configuration options for activated add-ons may also show up in this interface.

As a side effect of this feature, Vandelay now has a new option in the interface which allows staff to limit which catalog records to which an inbound record matches to bib records within a record bucket. When a record bucket and match set are chosen, only the records in the bucket can act as merge/overlay targets for the inbound Vandelay records.